Recreating Justice League's Knightmare Batman With ZBrush & 3D Painter

"The whole idea for this project started after watching The Batman directed by Matt Reeves, and also Zack Snyder's director's cut version of Justice League. I really loved Ben Affleck's take on Batman, and I really liked this kind of lonely, fallen version of Batman, the Knightmare Batman, where he evolves in a post-apocalyptic desert environment. And at the same time, I loved the really artistic-cinematographic approach for The Batman, which gives it a really dark, serious vibe.

For the references, I mainly used some of the movie screenshots and behind-the-scenes photos to create the model accurately. For the face itself, I take all the photos of the actor with the most neutral face possible in all the angles I can find."

"This way I can 'sketch' the whole character and I start to define the silhouette. It's really a silhouette job, and at this stage, I don't even do some objects that don't affect the shape of the silhouette, like the gauntlet straps, the knee pads, the glasses, and things like that.

When it's done and I think the proportions are right, I start to define each object more and push each part to its best, depending on its importance. I also start to add objects that I skipped in the silhouette stage, then I polish objects according to the importance I give them.

For example, for this character, I focused more on the face, the hands, and the bust."

"For the face and body of my animation-ready characters, to speed up the production of multiple characters using the same topology, I use a specific workflow that consists of sculpting a head or body from a random primitive or base mesh and then projecting the correct topology using the ZWrap plugin for ZBrush. This allows me to reuse color maps, displacement maps, hair and fur, and even rigging across all my characters."

"First, I used Marvelous Designer to quickly create a base for the coat, balaclava, trousers, and gauntlet bandages. Unfortunately, I find Marvelous Designer rather poor at handling topology, UVs, or even cloth thickness, so this has to be done outside the software."

"I then import these meshes into Maya with already nice proportions and folds to create a clean topology and UVs using Derrick Sesson's Marvelous Designer Retopology Toolkit for Maya, which is a great and useful tool for this kind of workflow.

Finally, I could import this clean mesh into ZBrush, where I would start to give it a thickness and add detail to create a displacement map for the shading."

"This workflow basically works for all hard surface parts. I used to model my hard surface objects in Maya and then import them back into ZBrush for detailing and polishing, but nowadays I prefer to create everything from scratch in ZBrush using ZModeler, which is a great tool for these types of tasks."

"For more organic modeling, I like to sculpt the objects using DynaMesh in ZBrush, and then I can remesh them using the ZRemesher algorithm, which is quite easy to manipulate and gives very good results. When my modeling is done, the subtools are ready to be exported as .fbx and sent to Maya for UV unwrapping.

From there, I assign different materials to the different groups of objects or groups of materials of the asset. This way I import the mesh into Substance 3D Painter, and the shading groups are imported as texture sets, which makes it easier to manage for large assets like this."

"Skin shading is pretty simple, it is done using Texturing.xyz pores and color maps that are projected onto my custom topology and that I can reuse for all my characters. This way I can use one of the maps, or a mixture of maps, as a base and then add custom layers and wear of all sorts like dirt, blood, sweat, makeup, or whatever."

"As for the shading itself, I'm using a combination of multiple maps that are driving a basic AiStandardSurface shader. Here is a sneak peek of them."

"The displacement map exported from ZBrush is driving the displacement, and a MicroSkin bump map is added as well to enhance the porosity of the human skin."

"For me, a lot of the believability of a realistic character skin like this actually comes from the hair and fur that goes on top of the skin. I use Yeti for Maya. Thanks to its nodal workflow it's very versatile and useful for characters and stuff like beard, hair, or peachfuzz."

"For the rest of the texturing and shading on the character, I used simple Substance 3D Painter Layering. I add a lot of wear and stains to enhance the realistic approach for materials. But the principle is just a simple PBR workflow."

"I'm using the Maya and Arnold combination for most of my renders, and I'm using Nuke for compositing. The lighting setup inside of my scenes is actually pretty simple. Most of the time, I'm using an HDRI environment to get some detailed reflections and shadows, and I'm adding some more lighting to simulate the sun, rim light, etc."

"Often the trick for me is to render fairly simple scenes in the 3D software and then do a lot of post-processing to 'degrade' the image and make it more believable. But you need to have a very good quality asset to make this work well.

Here is a little breakdown in Nuke to show the process from a raw render to a final image."

"I'd say the main challenge on this character was the overcoat because it's a strong piece that needed to have a nice drape, as well as a good silhouette. It's basically a piece of fabric that takes up the entire height of the character, so it has to look good for the whole character to look right. Also for me, clothes are one of the most difficult parts of CGI, and it was the first time I actually used this workflow for them."

"For beginner artists, I would say that having very strong knowledge about body anatomy, face anatomy, materials, and even the way clothes behave and look, are basic fundamentals that for me any character artist should have. When you have this strong foundation, you can then start to play and you can make whatever you want.

Finally, try to push your work as far as you can! I've seen too many amazing characters shown in a simple turntable that would look crazy good in some nice shots!"